Escaping the Two-State Snare

The new Israeli government, a coalition of ultra-religious, fundamentalist, racist, and neoliberal ideologues and placeholders, ensures that settlements will continue to expand. The lives of Jerusalem Arabs, Negev Bedouin, and Area C Palestinian residents will be embittered and endangered by intensive expropriation and Judaization campaigns. Every two years or so a military operation in Gaza, Lebanon, or the West Bank will “cut the grass” — that is, cause enough destruction to plunge Palestinian society into misery and discourage any plans to mobilize violently against Israel in the near future. Some key demands of settlers, including construction of Jewish housing in the E1 zone between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem and expan sion of ultranationalist Jewish presence on the Temple Mount/Haram al- Sharif, will be pushed aggressively. Israeli foreign policy will continue to characterize the Middle East as a polarized battleground between civilization and Islamist barbarism, to stick its fingers in the eyes of European critics and the Obama administration, while also seeking effective but under- the- table alliances with antidemocratic forces in Egypt, the Arab Gulf, and elsewhere in the region. The hysterical campaign against Iranian nuclear technology and the Orwellian refusal to discuss the future of Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal will also continue.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good, and the very extremism of this government is as good a guarantee as any that another doomed and counterproductive American negotiating initiative will not materialize, or will at least be substantially delayed. This gives progressives and peace builders a desperately needed opportunity. Fires of hope and change need to be lit. To burn they will require oxygen. That oxygen has for many years been drained out of the politics around this issue by the suffocating mantra that confrontation and open criticism of oppressive, immoral, and ruthless Israeli policies must be avoided to “protect the peace negotiations.” We must take full advantage of the present interval by having the courage to draw proper conclusions from the disappearance of a negotiated route to the two- state solution.

In place of a two- state snare and delusion, we must embrace a strategy of political mobilization that makes our values — not old commitments to institutional forms that used to serve as proxies for those values — the direct guides to our actions. My proposal is for Palestinians and Jews to fight, in every peaceful way possible, for principles of democracy, equality, and non- exclusivist opportunities for self- determination for each people. It is too late to care about whether the results of those struggles will be one state, two states, or three states. This means, for example, advocating that Palestinians vote in East Jerusalem elections, which they still have the legal right to do. Even a partial mobilization of that enormous population could transform governance of the city, establishing an inspiring precedent for deep political alliances between Palestinians and Jews. Israeli Jews seeking to change Israel into the kind of country that could change itself should follow Avrum Burg’s example and support the predominantly Arab Joint List. The potential of that list to mobilize Jewish liberals, doves, and progressives is substantial. We all know many Jews who voted Meretz only out of nostalgia but whose hearts were with the Joint List. When that alliance has twenty to twenty- five seats, change will come to Israel. After all, can anyone imagine a Democratic president in Washington without a genuine working alliance between liberals, African Americans, and Latinos?

On the international plane, we should strongly support the BDS movement’s focus on the Occupation and all the evils associated with it. From boycotts against German companies in the thirties, white segregationists in the fifties, and South African apartheid in the nineties, Jews have traditionally upheld economic sanctions as a powerful tool for direct action and transforming consciousness. Palestinian efforts to secure international condemnation of and sanctions against Israel at the International Criminal Court, the UN Security Council, and elsewhere should also be supported, including efforts to prevent an American veto of new and binding UN Security Council resolutions for Palestinian political and human rights.

None of this contradicts Michael Lerner’s...